Bismut – Matsutake
Tonzonen Records – 2026
Instrumental, Rock, Psychedelic
Rated: *****
At first it feels like wandering into a clearing you weren’t meant to find… Spores immediately circling all around you, the sound quickly rising from the ground, tangled and alive! Bismut’s new album Matsutake, immediately takes root… It grows, spreading through dense looping riffs that never feel constructed, but discovered. Like something foraged rather than written, their heaviness emerges from repetition and patience. Each riff circling back, each pattern thickening, blossoming…
There is a pulse beneath it all, for at their core lies a deep commitment to heavy, riff-driven structures, dense, circling patterns that anchor everything in a raw, physical intensity. Opening track Alienation immediately being a prime example. Steady, insistent and communal, the trio move as if one, listening closely to one another, following subtle shifts and allowing the music to breathe and sprawl. What begins as a single idea stretches outwards into something unpredictable. You can hear on record that the live animal is even wilder. Grooves deepen, rhythms fracture and then suddenly, cohere again. It’s a process. A process of getting there. A process of becoming rather than arriving.
Sticking to tone, adding to the menace, following track Neugier’s primary impulse remains physical and direct: groove, repetition, and impact. The band thrives on endurance, patiently building and sustaining energy until it becomes all consuming. Going live Friday the 17th (HERE), it’s the logical second single, building around the weight of their sound. Traces of the atmospheric and the exploratory linger like spores in the air, psychedelic hues, fleeting moments of drift, never overtaking the terrain. The ground remains firm, physical, driven by the ritual of the riff and the rhythm. And as we near the end and the movement slows… We soon get whirled around, in a dervish fashion until break down. And once again, you can hear it become absolute ferocious on stage somewhere.
Assemblage follows, starts like the desperate moment of respite needed. Touches of jazz-like wandering and atmospheric sketching, turn the vista upside down. But soon the drums get this nervous edge. And in the upside down world, the war between control and surrender commences. They build patiently, endure within the groove, and trust the unfolding, the polyphonic jazz lines sprouting beneath, the industrial reverberations echoing the darkness that hides within machines. It feels raw, forceful and like some sort of last stand. And we’re only halfway through…
They keep up the pace, the energy, the overarching tones and feelings during the other three tracks as well. Showcasing what drives the Bismut three, their true character, a balance of exploration and force, guided by instinct and driven by the power of the riff. And in that persistence, their music ceases to be a performance and becomes an ecosystem. That’s why there’s something fitting in the way Matsutake echoes the spirit of The Mushroom at the End of the World book by Anna Tsing. Both seem to emerge from desperate margins, places shaped by collapse, unpredictability, and the absence of structure. The music, like the mushroom, does not impose itself on the landscape. It listens, adapts, and grows in response to what’s there. Riffs feel like traces of something uncovered, as if the spores were always waiting beneath the surface.
In that sense, the album that releases through Tonzonen Records on April 24th, carries a kind of fragile resilience. It thrives not despite uncertainty, but because of it. The grooves stretch and persist, forming temporary worlds that feel communal and fleeting at once. Moments of connection arise, dissolve, and leave behind only a lingering sense of having witnessed something spectacular. The Bismut three seem to share an understanding that beauty does not require control or perfection. Instead, it exists in the entanglement, in the improvisation, the repetition, the patient act of staying with something as it becomes. What Bismut seem to capture is that same quiet truth… Even in fragmented spaces, among the wreckage and the ruins, something beautiful can still grow, stubborn and luminous.
(Written by JK)
Check out the first single Alienation now and be ready for the full Matsutake album on April 24th!
And while you're at it, congratulate drummer Peter, for it's his birthday!
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